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ENGLAND have attempted to ease the pressure on their stuttering top order by deliberately trying not to focus on their failure to deliver on their big reputations.

Despite every member of the top six arriving in New Zealand with a Test average over 40 - usually the benchmark for a good Test player - no England player has recorded a first-innings century in the last eight Tests.

It has become the focus of much debate during the series, particularly when the selectors reacted to their desperate first Test defeat in Hamilton by dropping seamers Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison and leaving the batting order intact.

That decision appeared to be vindicated, with England bouncing back in Wellington with a comfortable 126-run triumph to set up a series decider at McLean Park which begins late tomorrow.

Yet while there has been plenty of debate outside the dressing room about the shortcomings of England's top order, Durham allrounder Paul Collingwood revealed the tourists have tried to play the crisis down.

You can put too much emphasis on it, it can go that way,'' admitted Collingwood.

You can put too much pressure on yourself by saying I've got to kick on'.

You play your best cricket when you're relaxed and enjoying yourself and reacting to the ball. You play your worst cricket when you're thinking you must do this, or don't do that.

If you think I mustn't drop the ball short because he'll smash it, you'll end up doing it - that's how life tends to work on a cricket pitch.

You can put too much pressure on yourself that way. I think because of that the boys haven't made it a massive issue among themselves, they just want to go out there and play their game.

We realise we want to make big runs but we're trying not to make it a massive issue. As long as we win games for England, that's the important thing.'' Collingwood, who scored halfcenturies in each innings during the victory at the Basin Reserve, was the last member of the top six to record a first-innings hundred when he scored 128 against West Indies at Chester-le-Street last June.

Since then Kevin Pietersen (twice), Michael Vaughan and Alastair Cook have scored centuries in the second innings, but not in the first innings, when there is a better chance of influencing the match.

I don't want to start making excuses because we need to start scoring hundreds, as that is how you win Test matches,'' conceded Collingwood.

I think we've come across some good bowling, certainly in the India series, when they were swinging it both ways, and Sri Lanka is a difficult place to score hundreds.

I wouldn't put it down to a lack of desire, concentration or anything like that. I would probably put it down to there being a lot of good bowling against us, but we believe we're better players than that and we should be going out there and scoring hundreds.

You have a bit of a laugh about it here and there between the batsmen, but we go out there setting our sights on scoring big runs and winning games for England.

We don't go out there thinking we must score a hundred today because we haven't done that for so many games. It's about winning games for England and in certain conditions sometimes a 60 is good enough on that day and that will win you the game.'' Anything but a victory in the final Test to secure a series triumph would be regarded as something of a disappointment, with most critics predicting a comfortable triumph for the tourists before the start of the tour.

But Collingwood believes New Zealand have been badly underrated by many people, adding: As players we realised how dangerous New Zealand are, whether everyone else realised that or not.

We realised it wasn't going to be a canter coming over here.

When a team bats down to number seven and eight like these guys do they're going to be a really hard team to beat and they've also got a lot of skill."

11:05am Thursday 20th March 2008

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